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Rancho Santiago has a many top-bred mules growing and developing.
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Our place is 2 miles off of the nearest paved country
road. Our mules are bred and raised on Rancho Santiago and are country
wise.
Mules are the hybrid
offspring of closely related equines. A mule is the foal of a mare, female
horse, and a Jackass, a male breeding donkey. Mules cannot reproduce.
Mules have been around for thousands of years and are pictured on the
walls of Egyptian tombs pulling war chariots.
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Mules are famous for being stubborn. They aren't more
stubborn - just smarter. A mule has to be
shown and communicated with as to what the trainer wants. A good mule
cannot be bullied or punished into responding because the mule will just
shut down and say "Oh Yeah Before I'll Hurt Myself You Will Have To
Kill Me!" This behavior has become known as stubbornness.
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Many
successful horse trainers are lousy mule trainers because of the radically
different personality of the mule as compared to the horse. An
appropriately handled mule is more like a friendly dog than like a
horse.
Rancho Santiago has gentle, dependable mules. Will Rancho Santiago mules load in trailers?
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Actually, in my
experience, the smartest equine I have had dealings with is the donkey.
The next smartest is the mule, and the horse comes in last on the
intelligence scale. Mules are stronger, live longer, mature slower, and
have greater endurance than horses. It takes more quality work and time to
develop a really good mule, but we know the investment is worth the
effort.
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All of our mules are imprinted at birth using the basics
learned from Dr. Miller, the outstanding mule and animal behavior expert
veterinarian. Our mares are selected for their individual
characteristics of which a calm workable disposition is a must. The
mule's basic disposition come mainly from the mare. We have found over
the years a crazy mare produces an extra crazy mule.
The baby mules are handled by people from
birth and trained to lead
during the first month of life. During its first year, a baby mule
learns to lead, stand tied to a
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fence without struggle, pick up feet,
have feet trimmed, load in a trailer, come up to us in the open pasture,
roach the mane with clippers, trim ears with scissors, be lead by a lead
rope from a big horse, saddled with child's saddle and blanket, and be
lead under a pack saddle, have bit placed in the mouth.
We do not put weight on the back of the growing baby mule because the
bones are not mature enough to support a rider or heavy pack. All of the
above activities are to gentle and slowly help the growing youngster to
get used to a long good life as a working companion mule.
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As a part of each of
our yearlings training and experience with new situations, we teach
these mules to load up in a covered goose neck trailer, half-top
trailer, and Percheron van.
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